Spy Mom

by Beth McMullen

  Dancing along beside me, Theo sings his ABCs, counts to fifty, and starts reciting Green Eggs and Ham, all in Spanish. I tell him to be quiet but he’s clearly enjoying my discomfort at this unexpected turn of events. Assembled on the benches is the mommy posse that helped me survive the first two years of Theo’s life more or less intact. I’m overcome with relief at seeing them here, same as always.

  Sam and Avery occupy one bench, sipping coffee and talking, of course, about kindergarten. Next to them sits Belinda, holding four-month-old Cooper, and Claire.

  They stop mid-conversation and stare at me. I wonder if I have snot in my hair or food on my face.

  “Well?” says Avery.

  “Well what?” I ask.

  “The interview,” she demands. “How was it? Did you like it? Did they like you? Did Theo do okay?”

  “Fine,” I say. “And no, definitely not, and yes to the other questions.”

  “It was awful,” Avery rightly concludes.

  “Worse than that,” I say. There is a collective sigh from the group as they see another option slip away from them. Now, if they decide to send their sons and daughters and grandsons to San Francisco Country Day, they will inevitably be plagued by my negative assessment of the school. They’ll forever wonder if I saw something they missed.

  “Will liked it,” I offer.

  “I’m telling you,” Avery says, “I’m rethinking the whole thing. I need to send Sophie to public school. I don’t know why I was even considering the privates. That environment is all wrong.”

  “You need a vacation, that’s what you need,” says Sam. “Or a good case of amnesia.”

  Claire laughs. “Or you need to be poor like us,” she says. “That makes the decision easy.”

  I look at Claire with shock. Her definition of poor is an annual income of marginally less than seven figures. Claire shrugs. “It’s all relative,” she says in her own defense.

  “That’s it,” Avery says. “I can’t take it anymore. We’re moving out of the city.”

  A dramatic hush descends upon us. Avery just spoke the words that shall not be spoken: “move to the suburbs.”

  Mothers have their own language and this group is no different. It took me a little while to figure it out but once I did, I was in. All you need to do is ask how old another person’s child is and how potty training went and bingo, you’ve got yourself at least a full hour of conversation while you tirelessly push your kid on the swings. When I explained this to Will, he accused me of pimping out our child to make friends. I wanted to argue but the idea was basically true, even if I took issue with his choice of words.

  A mommy posse has certain unwritten rules. First, we aren’t going to talk about anything that falls outside the home sphere. Politics, old jobs, current events, and extramarital affairs are off-limits. Stress about school choices, Halloween costumes, picky eaters, and sales at the Nordstrom shoe department are acceptable. Well, we do give some leeway to Sam when he attempts to broaden the conversation but that’s only because we feel sorry for him, having to masquerade as a mom and all.

  We live in a nice happy bubble and no one is pretending otherwise. But the bubble has a shelf life and it’s getting closer to its expiration date. Our days of sitting on benches, watching the kids play in the sand and slide down the slides, are limited. Recently, Claire said her old company asked if she would consider a small consulting gig during the week.

  “Nothing serious,” she said, already on the defensive. “Some mentoring of the new recruits. A few hours a week. That’s all.”

  She was met with silence. Finally, Avery spoke up.

  “That’s really great, Claire.”

  “Well, I didn’t say I was going to do it. I never said I would do it.” With that, she burst into tears and Sam looked like he wanted to die or at the very least go find a bench occupied by professional football players or anyone more masculine than crying mothers. Reinventing yourself is not without issues. I should know, having done it a number of times.

  My last personal reinvention began one night in the slums outside of Manila. I was chasing a woman who used an orphanage as a front for her far more lucrative business of selling feedstock chemicals for nerve agents to the highest bidders. I mean, who would ever suspect the Sweet Caress Home for Children as being anything other than what it appeared to be? And even if you did suspect, you’d never admit it. People would simply dismiss you as being cynical and angry and who wants to be called cynical and angry? Davina Castillo had the moral high ground, dedicating her life to saving these poor rejected little souls, so it was next to impossible for the local authorities to pin her down as a hard-core criminal. She was Mother Teresa gone to the dark side.

  And, of course, she knew I was coming. They always knew I was coming. If you used that as a criterion upon which to judge my career as a spy, I would certainly warrant a check mark next to “needs improvement.” It left me little choice but to chase after her and she, smartly, headed straight into the slums of Quezon City, where a person could uncomfortably disappear for decades. My Filipino was perfect but I had blue eyes and pale skin and I might as well have been from Mars as far as the locals were concerned.

  The streets were snarled with traffic and the air thick with a yellowish pollution. The dwellings were constructed of cinder blocks and discarded pieces of corrugated metal. Tattered sheets and tapestries thrown over bits of twine stood in when the residents ran out of scavenged building materials. As I walked down the center of an alleyway littered with empty plastic bottles, Styrofoam packaging, and mildewed cardboard boxes, a handful of children watched me with intense dark eyes. Eventually one would come up and offer information in exchange for a handful of money.

  “Lady, you want help?”

  “I’m looking for someone,” I said. “Her name is Davina.”

  “Oh, yes. I know her. Mrs. Davina. Her brother lives near here.”

  Nice. She’s making millions dealing in illegal chemical weapons and she won’t even buy her brother out of the slums.

  I handed the boy a pile of small bills and, grinning, he gave me very specific directions to Davina’s brother’s shack.

  She was surprised to see me but tried not to show it.

  “You seem to be leading a double life,” I said to her in English, my finger loosely positioned on the trigger of my gun.

  “Aren’t we all?” she said, with a brief nod of her head.

  There were three of them and they obviously took their jobs as bodyguards seriously. And then there it was, that split-second hesitation on my part.

  I don’t want to die here, whispered a voice pushing up from the dark recesses of my consciousness. There are so many things left to do.

  I remember that moment as the beginning of the end. An elbow jab to the throat of one bodyguard, a knee to the skull of the second, and a foot to the groin of the third saved me, but I could’ve lost everything in that split-second pause. Now Davina and I stood, guns drawn, staring one another down.

  “I have nothing to lose,” I said. But I was still rattled by the voice and I didn’t sound convincing. “You’ve all that money. And think of the children.”

  “Who cares about the children?” she said with a smirk that I resented on behalf of the kids. “And I won’t be able to do much with the money if I’m in an American jail, now will I?” I saw her clench her teeth, ready to absorb the kickback from firing her gun. But I was faster, I was trained, and that had to count for something.

  My bullet hit her dead center in the forehead. Her bullet hit the roof, putting a hole in the tin panels and letting rays of light burst through as if I were receiving a message directly from God.

  Simon was really mad I killed her.

  “We needed her,” he said, when I returned to Washington. “She knew things and now her brains are all over the floor of some Manila slum. Good work, Sally.”

  “She was going to kill me,” I pointed out.

  “That really isn’t my pro
blem, is it?” he said, leaving me to contemplate what horrible locale he’d send me to next to make his point that I shouldn’t have shot Davina in the head.

  I never told anyone about the voice that made me pause in a Quezon City slum. But I didn’t have to. The seed had been planted and I was already beginning to reinvent myself.

  Belinda, holding Cooper and bellowing for Amanda to stop beating up Carter, looks exhausted. Cooper is four months old and demanding. She swears she isn’t going to make it. It is our job to assure her she’ll be fine even if secretly we’re horrified by what we see. Her eyes are sunken into her head and her skin is the color of a fresh bruise. She hasn’t brushed her stringy hair in what looks like weeks and I can only guess about her teeth.

  “Amanda is acting out her hostility,” she says, trying to nurse Cooper, who is kicking and screaming and turning red as a beet. “She covered his head with a blanket yesterday and when I caught her she said she thought he was cold. And I wanted to hit her. I really did. Is that wrong?”

  Well, yes, but confirming the worst to someone on the brink is unkind in lots of ways.

  Avery steps in to give the perfect answer and we all nod our heads in agreement and thank the heavens we aren’t Belinda. After a few afternoons on the playground with Belinda and Cooper, Claire announced that Owen would be an only child. Fortunately, Belinda was too tired to take offense.

  I watch Theo and Carter rolling around in the sand and laughing. I never had siblings. I have no idea what it’s like. Would you be hitting each over the head with metal Tonka trucks in an attempt to secure the bulk of limited parenting resources for yourself or would you love and protect one another no matter the cost? Amanda has apparently decided the resources are rightly hers and suffocation is a perfectly reasonable way to get them back. The guilt at having ruined Amanda’s life is written all over Belinda’s face. She is nothing short of a tragedy at the moment.

  Avery takes the little bundle of Cooper and begins bouncing him around, cooing sweetly in his ear in a way I never managed to pull off without looking ridiculous. Cooper immediately stops shrieking, nuzzles down in his fuzzy green blanket, and goes to sleep.

  “He’s so beautiful,” Avery whispers. She desperately wants another child but can’t seem to make it happen even with medical intervention.

  Sam rolls his eyes. He demanded a promise from his son that if he agreed to be Carter’s nanny and hang out with the likes of us all day there would be no more babies.

  “Two is enough,” he told us. “I only have two hands. A third baby would require me to grow another arm and I’m too old for that nonsense.”

  His son, having no alternative but to meet his father’s demands, went off to the doctor the next day. Such is the way families are made in the modern economy.

  I’m undecided on the idea of a second child. There’s no denying the ticking grows louder every day but sometimes I’m still able to ignore it. Could I love another child the way I love Theo? Is it possible to have that much love and not be crushed by its implications? I rest a single hand on my mostly flat stomach and wonder briefly what such a child would look like. Would he have my hair, my eyes? Would he come out speaking Tagalog? Would he be a she?

  My reverie is interrupted by the silence. Everyone is staring at my son, who’s involved in an animated conversation with a nanny.

  The nannies sit on the other side of the playground. We would never consider sitting on their side of the playground and they would never sit on ours. It’s perverse playground etiquette that makes no sense whatsoever. The nannies all speak Spanish except for one who speaks Russian and she sits alone. Occasionally, I hear them ranting about an employer or a charge and when they catch me staring, I look away.

  Theo is gesturing with his arms. He is telling them something about Luke Skywalker and C-3PO but I’m too far away to catch the details. The nannies are laughing.

  “Lucy?” Sam says accusingly, as if I have been holding out on him. “When did Theo learn to speak Spanish?”

  I can’t exactly say I don’t know so I lie. “The cleaning lady speaks to him and she has been, um, coming a lot these days.”

  “Wow,” says Avery, still bouncing a sleeping Cooper in her arms. “He’s really got it down. Can you keep up?”

  Oh, yes. And later I plan on teaching him Mandarin.

  “Sort of,” I say. “Theo, go play! We don’t have much time.”

  He waves good-bye to the nannies and heads back to the sand pit. My cheeks are red. Lying is about to become a whole lot more complicated.

  “That’s fabulous,” says Claire, her brow furrowing in concentration. “I’m going to sign Owen up for lessons immediately. He should know a second language by now. How is he going to get into Yale if he can’t speak a second language?”

  Poor Owen. Someday I’ll owe him an apology.

  As we sit on the benches, watching the kids, listening to baby Cooper’s little snores and basking in the familiarity of the scene, the conversation turns back to the issue of where to send the kids to kindergarten. We’ll beat it to death and when we are done we’ll start all over again from the beginning. It’s what we do and, for now, it allows us to ignore what is just on the horizon, the call to reinvent ourselves yet again. But the truth is, I’m starting to wonder if I have what it takes to pull it off one more time.

  34

  My in-laws are sitting on the front steps when Theo and I pull up from the playground. Is it time for me to give them their own key? That’s a thought too horrifying to contemplate with any seriousness right now. But they should be happy because this is the day when the earth is going to move, the heavens open up, and William II and Rose Marie are going to be asked to babysit. I’m confident that William II’s reaction will be nothing short of jubilant. The jury is still out on Rose Marie.

  Part of William II’s acute obsession with grandfathering after his brush with death was a desire to take Theo places. He was tickled by the idea of a trip to the zoo or the aquarium or the beach or the ice cream shop two blocks away.

  “How wonderful!” he’d say. “I don’t think I’ve ever been to an aquarium.”

  “Of course you have, dear,” a tortured Rose Marie would answer.

  “Well, not with my grandson,” he’d counter.

  He thought he might take up skiing.

  “Will never has time to take Theo skiing but I do,” he’d say. “We’ll rent a house. Slope side! I have time.” And he would pause for a moment to savor the idea of time, of being alive instead of being dead. “I love skiing.”

  “You’ve never been skiing, dear,” Rose Marie would remind him.

  “So we’ll take lessons together. It’ll be fun!”

  My mother-in-law has taken to accessorizing her St. John suits with a look of permanent resignation.

  If there were an alternative, I’d take it, but I’m in a situation and I don’t see any other way. I took Theo along on one of my misadventures before and learned my lesson. I will not make the same mistake twice.

  Yes, it’s time to begin letting go even if the idea leaves me weak in the knees. Theo has to live in this world and not the one from which I came. I have to trust that others can keep him safe and love him as much as I do. I have to believe it even if on some level I know it’s not possible.

  “Theo,” I say, opening the garage door, “how would you like to go to the zoo with Grandma and Gramps this afternoon?”

  “Can I ride the train?” he asks, apparently unaware of the world shifting beneath him.

  “Of course,” I say. “Gramps loves the train.”

  “He loves everything!” Theo says with wonder. “Are you coming?”

  “No.”

  “Okay.” He’s unfazed. I have clearly overestimated my own importance. “I can show them how to get there. I know the directions.”

  “I have no doubt about that,” I say. “Now hop out and say hello. In English, please.”

  William II squeezes Theo so hard it looks as if The
o’s eyeballs might pop out of his head. Then he tosses him up in the air without any look of strain on his face. Rose Marie, who visibly blanches every time she hears the name “Grandma,” air kisses me and then looks disapprovingly around the living room. It’s a disaster but certainly not the only one on this fine San Francisco day.

  As Rose Marie settles them into the guest bedroom, which includes replacing the 100-percent-recycled toilet paper with something softer than sandpaper, I float the plan to Gramps, without getting into the specifics, of course.

  “I have a few things I need to take care of this afternoon so I was wondering if you would be willing to take Theo to the zoo without me?”

  My father-in-law takes a step back as if I just whacked him across the chest with a two-by-four.

  “Are you ill?” he asks. “Because you look a little washed out to me.”

  I wish everyone would stop saying that. I’m starting to take it personally.

  “No,” I say. “I’m fine. Just a few errands to run and I thought Theo might have more fun with you two than being dragged around with me all afternoon.”

  “I love that boy,” William II says in a deep voice. “I love him more than anything.” The Laurence Olivier vibe comes through strong and steady. “We can do whatever he wants. Oh, and I want to pay for that San Francisco Country Day that Will was telling me about.”

  I’ll leave it to Will to explain how Theo will probably not be accepted because he has a loud-mouthed, overly paranoid mother.

  “That’s very sweet,” I say, “but unnecessary. Let’s start with the zoo.”

  Over the course of the morning, I’ve convinced myself that, logistically, it would be difficult for anyone to sneak up and snatch my kid at the zoo. Too many people milling around eating cotton candy and popcorn and feeding the giraffes. But that small fact does little to help my stomach, now located somewhere down around my shoes. I feel as if I just jumped off the Empire State Building without a parachute.